What Makes Your Blood Boil?

[Ryika]

Do you have any idea at all of how completely offensive this is?

But it's true.

Of course that's perfectly fine, they've probably done enough during their earlier years to compensate for being a drain now.

 

[warpus]

I hate distracted drivers. Adding them to my list of things that make my blood boil.

Was crossing the street yesterday, had the right of way, green guy symbol, etc. Lady turning left onto the street is ploughing right towards me. Swerves out of the way out of the last second and goes around me. I can clearly see that she's on her phone. The only thing I could do is jump out of the way and give her the middle finger during the whole maneouver.

Always be on the lookout for bad drivers. Even if you're crossing a one way street, always look both ways. You never know...

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Talking about drivers, the slow ones staying in the left lane, even the not so slow that keep speed at the maximun allowed and wont go out of the way thinking they are police agents or something.

 

[rah]

Most taxi/uber/etc drivers need their phones so they can figure out where they're going. I had one guy run up on the sidewalk while staring at his phone figuring out where he needed to turn. Obviously it was the wrong place.

 

[Farm Boy]

But it's true.

Of course that's perfectly fine, they've probably done enough during their earlier years to compensate for being a drain now.

They're only a drain when society has forgotten how to make use of their value and has progressed towards being stupid enough to waste them en masse. Those societies are poorer for their juvenile arrogance.

 

[Lexicus]

They're only a drain when society has forgotten how to make use of their value

This might be too charitable. "Forgotten"? More like "aggressively denied the existence of".

 

[warpus]

Yes, the North American custom of sending off the elderly to "homes" is abhorrent. There's so much knowledge and wisdom in those brains, so let's send them all away so we never have to listen to them speak.

 

[Farm Boy]

Things and people that remind me I am going to die scare me.

 

[rah]

I figure I've contributed (along with employer taxes) over 350k into Social Security that over time is worth at least double that. Most of that money went to paying for somebodies SS check that never really contributed into the system.
I figure I paid for health insurance all the way back when I was young and really didn't need it to help subsidize the older people in the pool. Now that I'm one of those older people in the pool I think it's kind of selfish of those younger that claim they don't really need the insurance and don't want to pay.

It's not the older people that are the problem.

 

[Lexicus]

Most of that money went to paying for somebodies SS check that never really contributed into the system.

Where do you get this idea from?

It's not the older people that are the problem.

Neither is it the younger people. In fact, the problem is rich people and their lackeys in the government.

 

[rah]

Where do you get this idea from?

A partial exaggeration. When I started paying into it in the 60's there were people that were collecting that had only paid into it part of the working career. And were going to collect way more out of it then they ever contributed. (which certainly won't be my experience)

And while yes the government is awful, if all the younger people had bought in and joined Obama Care. It wouldn't be the disaster that it is today, and would have been even more difficult for the current scum to scuttle. (wishful thinking maybe)

 

[Lexicus]

And while yes the government is awful, if all the younger people had bought in and joined Obama Care. It wouldn't be the disaster that it is today, and would have been even more difficult for the current scum to scuttle. (wishful thinking maybe)

Don't blame us, blame the rich people and their lackeys in the government, who prevented us from having real universal health care.

 

[Ryika]

They're only a drain when society has forgotten how to make use of their value and has progressed towards being stupid enough to waste them en masse. Those societies are poorer for their juvenile arrogance.

There's so much knowledge and wisdom in those brains, so let's send them all away so we never have to listen to them speak.

I mean that's cute and all, but is it really true? It was somewhere in the past when old people were your only real source of information of the times before you lived, but we now have had television for a while, and then there's the internet now.

About wisdom... I find that most old people I had to deal with in my life were either extreme bigots, or extreme Gutmenschen, not the well-balanced people who have learned all of their lives and moved past the limitations of a young mind. That whole idea of people becoming wise as they grow older doesn't at all hold true in my personal experience, it seems more to me like biases and habits cement themselves in their heads. Of course there are exceptions, but saying that old people in general are "wise"? Nah.

Yes, the North American custom of sending off the elderly to "homes" is abhorrent.

Well, I agree with this part. Although... I think the custom itself is fine, the way they're often treated there, not so much.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

But it's true.

Of course that's perfectly fine, they've probably done enough during their earlier years to compensate for being a drain now.

"Probably"?

So your generation built your country from scratch, did you? And your parents just spontaneously popped into existence without having had parents of their own?

Most taxi/uber/etc drivers need their phones so they can figure out where they're going. I had one guy run up on the sidewalk while staring at his phone figuring out where he needed to turn. Obviously it was the wrong place.

That's what dashboard GPS maps are for. Mind you, my Chinese food delivery guy still got lost the other night.

Yes, the North American custom of sending off the elderly to "homes" is abhorrent. There's so much knowledge and wisdom in those brains, so let's send them all away so we never have to listen to them speak.

When my great-grandparents immigrated from Sweden, they settled in a farming community here in Alberta, where a lot of other Swedish families lived. Many of these families were 3-generations - grandparents, parents, and kids. When my grandfather ended up there, he married my grandmother (back in the 1930s). Fast-forward 20 years when they and some of their friends moved to Red Deer... after my dad's generation got married, both families, plus my grandmother's sister kept this multi-generation household arrangement.

I've never lived in a nuclear family of two married parents plus kids, plus pets. The closest was when my dad and I lived with his girlfriend, her 4 kids, and their cat (that was before I was into cats, believe it or not). But they weren't married, she wasn't my mother, and she tried her damnedest to keep me away from my grandparents. So nuclear families are something I'm not familiar with. The first 44 years of my life were mostly spent with elderly people, or at least my significantly older dad. It will be 10 years in August since he had to go into the hospital and then a succession of nursing homes. If I'd been able to care for him at home, I would have. But that's not how life worked out.

As far back as the '70s, I've had the "You live with your grandparents? Eww, isn't that weird?"

Nope. To me it's perfectly normal.

Elderly people are young people who have made more trips around the Sun than the rest of us. They're not some bizarre alien lifeform, and they have a treasure trove of information and experience.

 

[Ryika]

"Probably"?

So your generation built your country from scratch, did you? And your parents just spontaneously popped into existence without having had parents of their own?

"Probably" as in "The person in question probably has done quite a lot, but there's still a chance that they've just been a lazy do-nothing who has leeched all their life.", not probably as in "I'm not sure if old people in general have done enough."

 

[warpus]

My grandmother lives on her own and looks after herself. She is in her 80s and is frail, but wouldn't have it any other way.

 

[Berzerker]

I was entering a Walmart and I put my arm out the window and caught a shopping cart that was rolling down the exit lane into traffic, so people who dont return shopping carts piss me off...and I thought I was lazy

 

[Farm Boy]

I mean that's cute and all, but is it really true? It was somewhere in the past when old people were your only real source of information of the times before you lived, but we now have had television for a while, and then there's the internet now.

And to think, Carnegie built libraries all over the place and filled them with books. The radio was my grandfather's generation's big new social tech. The television was my father's. The pc/internet is mine. The smartphone/social media seems to be now. If you think the internet, google, wikipedia, and the convenient accessibility of a vast sea of information(often of dubious quality, familiar that) equate with a grasp of said information, much less the ability to fashion it into a useful worldview, I think you are sadly mistaken. Undergraduates(incoming freshemen are now whatever "generation z" will be called) are roundly terrible at auditing and applying information. Is this because they're stupid? No, they seem about as smart as I remember being. Do they lack reading skills? No, if anything, they probably read more than my peers did. it is because they are young, impatient, and inexperienced. I spend a great deal of my time walking 18-25ish year olds through the registration process at university. It's not a particularly complicated process, but it does have steps, and programs of study do have requirements to complete. If I had a dollar for every time a student came to me, stumped with how to fill out a form or register for a class and the solution was to read the directions to them out loud, I'd have a solid windfall. Young people are plenty bigoted too, even if the language and targets shift with the passage of time. The old bigots learned it when they were young. As are tomorrow's so doing now.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I mean that's cute and all, but is it really true? It was somewhere in the past when old people were your only real source of information of the times before you lived, but we now have had television for a while, and then there's the internet now.

Uh-huh. If I want to know what life was like during WWII, I'll ask someone who lived in that time. My grandparents told me what life was like during the Depression; it was a time when they learned to never throw anything away if it could be repurposed for something else. I absorbed this attitude, and now it drives people nuts when I tell them not to throw something out because I can find another use for it

About wisdom... I find that most old people I had to deal with in my life were either extreme bigots, or extreme Gutmenschen, not the well-balanced people who have learned all of their lives and moved past the limitations of a young mind. That whole idea of people becoming wise as they grow older doesn't at all hold true in my personal experience, it seems more to me like biases and habits cement themselves in their heads. Of course there are exceptions, but saying that old people in general are "wise"? Nah.

Of course not all old people are wise. I've met some who were terrible bigots, and I've mentioned my grandfather's bigoted attitude toward Jews. I spent some time socializing with an 85-year-old man when I was in the hospital 16 years ago. I'd heard his last name, and recalled that I'd had a classmate in elementary school with that name, so I asked him if they were related. He said, "He's my son," so we started chatting. I was in there for weeks, and this was one of the few people I had to talk to... and he tried to convert me to becoming a JW. He was constantly writing down bible verses he wanted me to read, and one conversation we had really irritated me. He complained about science and space research. I pointed out that so many things in our everyday lives that we took for granted were either direct or indirect results of space program research, but he just kept complaining about "all the money being wasted" on science.

It never occurred to him that part of the medical equipment and procedures that were keeping him alive were due to the research he found such a waste of money.

 

[Commodore]

Yes, the North American custom of sending off the elderly to "homes" is abhorrent.

And what would you propose as the alternative? That people who are barely making it financially take on the additional burden of moving in their elderly parents and all the additional costs that carries with it?

I think it's a little unfair for elderly parents to expect their children or other younger family members to completely upend their own lives to take care of them because they failed to plan for their future properly. Because most old people that do end up rotting away in some state-run nursing home hellhole are ones that didn't save enough for retirement and thought Medicare and Social Security would be all they needed.

I remember back when I (very briefly) sold insurance. One of the types of insurance I sold was long-term care insurance that was supposed to cover things like assisted living, nursing homes, long term medical care, etc. I can't tell you how many times people would try to avoid buying it by saying "oh, Medicare will pay for all that" or "my son/daughter will take care of me." At which point I would then educate them on Medicare and show them that no, Medicare will not pay for your long-term care needs. I would also make them feel like garbage for expecting their kids to take care of them. My sales pitch on that was basically me asking them some basic questions about their kids. A lot of them would say their kids were married with kids of their own, lived out of state, had jobs, etc. That's when I'd turn into a bit of a bully. I would then ask them "How is it fair to your son/daughter for you to demand they give up the life they have built for themselves to take care of you because you failed to plan for your future needs?" After letting that sink in for a bit, I'd follow it up with the old line "parents should take care of their children, children should not have to take care of their parents." You'd be surprised at how successful that sales pitch was.